


Hearts of the Children

by songofsunset



Series: Singleness of Heart [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, Supernatural Elements, Transcendence AU, more or less
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3870595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofsunset/pseuds/songofsunset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Transcendence Dipper and Mabel return home, but nothing is the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Here we are again! 
> 
> This is fic for the lovely [Transcendence AU](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com/summary), and is also being posted on my tumblr. 
> 
> I'm not sure how long this sequel will be (possibly longer than the first one? Don't hold me to that!) but we're back to the grindstone- Enjoy!
> 
> (I’d like to give a warning for themes of parental abuse throughout the whole fic. Not healthy relationships, these, not at all.)

_"Behold, the time has fully come. To turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest the w҉hol̀ę ̕e̸a̴r͜t͡h be smitten withą ͜cu͞r̀s̛e---"_

**-** Paraphrased from **Doctrine and Covenants 110, 14-15,** itself a version of **Malachi 4:5-6** in the King James Bible.

 

———

Dipper watched his sister unpack the car.

“Sorry, Mabel,” he said, hunched into a ball and floating a bit above her. “I’d help if I could.”

Mabel hefted her brother’s duffel bag out of the trunk. “It’s fine, bro-bro, I got it,” she said, as cheerfully as could be expected under the circumstances.

A few feet away their parents exchanged nervous glances.

Dipper looked away.

———

“Mabel,” said Mark Pines, trying to retain his daughter’s attention. She fidgeted, very clearly wanting to be anywhere else. “We can’t have you summoning Dipper.”

Mabel’s head snapped up, her face incredulous. “What? But how else is he even gonna be able to do anything? We can’t just leave him floating around invisible all the time!”

“Mabel, it’s incredibly dangerous. Haven’t you seen the news? Even Ouija boards are getting people killed these days. You can’t go around just- offering Dipper your soul for help with chores and stuff.”

Mabel scoffed, readjusting her bright green sweater. Today it had a teddy bear on the front- an actual miniature teddy bear, stitched into the sweater and covered in glitter. “I’m not gonna offer Dipper my soul,” she said, “You’re totally overreacting.”

“I’m serious Mabel,” said Mark. “You just can’t be summoning demons. Even if they are- were-” Mark paused, took a breath- “Not even your brother, Mabel, understand?”

Mabel scowled, like this conversation was a personal trial for her specifically. And what did she think this was for Mark? Not everyone could be as blasé as she was about the spontaneous demonification of their loved ones!

Mark took another breath and tried to calm himself down. Getting riled up wouldn’t help this situation.

Mabel, in the meanwhile, had been exchanging significant looks with the seemingly empty air just to the side. Right- at least he sort of knew where Dipper was right now. The kids hadn’t been all that close when they’d left for the summer, but now they seemed practically inseparable. He supposed that being the only person who could actually interact with you would do a lot to bring them together…

Not that Mark could actually tell, what with the whole invisible dream-demon thing going on.

“Mabel?” he prompted, trying to make the words as threatening as context would allow. They had to make the rules clear right at the beginning, or there would be no hope of managing things.

Mabel sighed, crossing her arms and looking resigned. “Fine.” she said, with far more attitude than Mark felt was appropriate. “I- I won’t go around summoning Dipper all the time”

Mark nodded, said, “Thank you Mabel,” and mentally patted himself on the back, congratulating himself on a job well done. Anna would be pleased.

———

Dipper hovered in the corner of the room near the ceiling, watching as his sister drew a summoning circle with her old sidewalk chalk.

“Are you sure we should be doing this Mabel?” he asked, unaccountably nervous. “I mean, you did promise-”

“Come on Dipping Sauce!” she said, detailing the shooting star symbol “I only promised not to summon you all the time while moving. Besides, this was your idea!”

It had seemed obvious at the time. Dad had been sitting there asking for a promise, and with a sudden clarity Dipper had seen all the loopholes, all the ways to twist the words and get away without promising anything.

In retrospect, the clarity of that compulsion made him nervous.

Dipper fidgeted. “Yeah, but Dad was still pretty clear. Do you really think-”

Mabel huffed loudly and stood up, dusting off her hands. “Come on, Dipper, do you really want to be invisible and intangible all day?” No, Dipper did not. “Get your butt down here and let me summon you so we can eat this popcorn, okay?”

Dipper shook his head but did as he was told.

And, after he was summoned (in exchange for half a bag of popcorn) he found that he barely felt guilty at all.

———

Anna’s shoulders were tense.

From where he stood, trying to massage them, Mark could feel every knot and kink, and they were less shoulders than they were twisted masses of muscle pain and soreness.

He prodded at a particularly awful part, and she groaned in relief, sagging into her chair.

Mark shook his head. “Sweetie, are you doing okay?” he asked, continuing to work at her shoulders.

“Yeah,” she said, “Just stress. The new department chair is still finding her footing and… one of the grad students in the language department was recently- well. They think he tried to make a demon deal for good grades.”

Mark felt his eyes widen, saw his wife shot him a look as he squeezed her shoulders maybe a bit harder than necessary.  "Is he-“

"He’s still alive,” she said. “-unfortunately. The hospital- the hospital thinks that he specified that the deal wouldn’t kill him. It’s not pretty.”

Mark tried to keep his breathing even, tried not to hear Mabel’s cheerful ‘I summon Dipdop the dweeby’ echoing in his head, tries not to think about all the ways that 'get your butt over here’ wasn’t anything remotely resembling a safe contract. He tried to think about nothing at all.

It would be fine. Mabel had promised not to summon demons and Dipper- well, Mabel had promised not to summon him either.

Mark continued massaging his wife’s shoulders, careful to be gentle. “Do you think-” he asked, then took a breath. “Do you think Dipper would-”

He felt her tense, but when she asked, “What about Dipper?” a moment later, she sounded careless, almost absent-minded.

“Nothing” said Mark, shaking his head and working at a particularly difficult knot of muscle. “Nothing at all.”

———

Everything was pain and screaming.

One moment Dipper and Mabel had been sitting together on the floor in front of the TV, sharing a bowl of cheese-puffs. Mabel had summoned him specifically so they could walk this show together while their parents were out for the day, and Dipper had been laughing, leaning to avoid Mabel as she went to smear cheese dust all down his side, relishing the sticky dry feeling of the cheese already all over his own fingers (Feelings! Tastes! Physical sensations!) when suddenly-

The cheese-puffs exploded all over the room, bowl hitting the wall next to the TV with a CRACK. Dipper spun into the air, blue fire flaring around him, breath caught in his throat as he tried to identify the threat when- it was their mother. Dipper’s fire flickered out.

Their mother had kicked the bowl of Cheese-puffs, and was screaming, and screaming, and-

“-WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING-” she yelled, voice cracking in her rage. “WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING WHEN YOU-”

And Mabel was screaming right back, hair messy and face as red as her sweater.

“-CAN’T JUST COME IN AND SCARE US LIKE THAT, WHAT THE CRAP MOM, WE WERE JUST WATCHING CARTOONS-

”-PROMISED NOT TO SUMMON ANYTHING-“

”-JUST WANTED TO HANG WITH DIPPER"

“-DANGEROUS-”

“-PERFECTLY SAFE-”

“-COULD HAVE DIED-”

“-NOTHING BAD-”

“ **S̸T̨̡O̧P̀͝** ” Dipper yelled, and Mabel froze, but their mother just rounded on him instead.

“LEAVE.”

Dipper stared at her.

“LEAVE, RIGHT NOW. YOU KNOW YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SUMMONED AND YOU NEED TO-”

Dipper tried to squeeze himself out of physical existence- and stabbing pain exploded through his entire body. He realized that he was writhing on the floor, cognizant of only the unavoidable knowledge that- the contract, the contract, he was going to-

“Mabel-” he wheezed. “I said I’d stay, until- until we finished-”

Mabel’s eyes widened in understanding. The deal had been half a bowl of snacks in exchange for his corporeality until the end of the episode. And Dipper, having already been presented with half a bowl of snacks, couldn’t leave until the episode finished, or until the contract was otherwise rendered void. The snacks were a loss and couldn’t be returned, and the episode was still far from over, so she needed to-

“-RIGHT NOW YOUNG MAN-” Their mother was yelling “-OR SO HELP ME THERE WILL BE-”

“It’s fine, Dipper!” Mabel said, and it was only the echoes of the contract that made Dipper even aware of her words through the searing, eye-stabbing agony twisting his entire body. “Go ahead, you’re fine, I release you from your-”

“GO!” his mother bellowed.

Dipper went. 


	2. Chapter 2

“We need to be clear. You are forbidden to summon Dipper, and if we find out you’re summoning him again, there will be consequences.”

Mabel pushed herself back into the couch, holding tightly to the pillow on her lap.

“But-“

“Young lady, _do you understand_?”

Mabel looked away. “I don’t get what you think Dipper is going to do. It’s Dipper, it’s not like he’s gonna cheat me or hurt me or something. He’s still a huge nerd and can’t even beat me at simple videogames.” Mabel glanced towards the ceiling, expecting a complaint- but no, Dipper still hadn’t come back yet. Mabel tried not to let that worry her.

Anna rubbed a hand over her face, muttering to herself about ‘too many children’ and ‘what had she done to deserve this’. Mark leaned forward, put a hand on his wife’s knee.

“I’m sure you think that you know what you’re talking about, Mabel, but you don’t have perspective, and you have to accept that we are your parents and for your own good-“

“He’s my brother! You really want me to leave my brother intangible all the time? What sort of parents are you, do you even know how little-”

“Mabel. Don’t talk to your mother like that. There will be no demon summoning, and that’s final.”

Mabel hissed into the pillow in frustration.

“We’re confiscating all your chalk and candles. You can have them back when you’ve proved that you can use them responsibly. 

“But-“ Mabel stammered, voice choked with rage, staring at her parents like she’d never seen them before.

“Mabel.” Her father warned, “While you live under our roof, you will do as we say.”

“We’re letting him stay around,” Anna cut in, “You’re lucky we haven’t called an exorcist yet, but if you keep this up we’ll to have no choice. You should be grateful we’re giving you this much leeway.”

Mabel’s eyes widened.

“But-“

“And that’s final.”

Mabel closed her mouth, squeezed the pillow tightly. “I understand.”

“Good.”

\------

Dinner was strained.

It was just Mark, Anna, and Mabel, sitting around the table, eating salad and corn and chicken nuggets (the ones shaped like dinosaurs).

Normally, Mabel would have been playing with her food, marching the chicken nuggets around with roars and liberal amounts of ketchup blood, and Dipper would be telling her to stop, and Mark would have been good-naturedly telling them off for arguing. Now, Dipper's absence in the room was a great deal more tangible than he was, and the heavy silence was only broken by the clicking of forks on plates, and the distant barking of the neighbor's dog.

The empty seat that was usually Dipper’s had been moved into the corner, and was currently piled with newspapers and craft supplies, along anything else that had been on the table when Anna went to set it for dinner.

Mark wasn't sure how he felt about that, but Anna maintained that the decision had been only practical- Dipper wouldn't be eating with them, after all.

Mabel set her fork down, and Mark watched as she gathered her silverware to leave the table. She had eaten nearly everything but- "Finish your vegetables, Mabel."

Mabel blinked, hard, then sat down and ate rest of the in only a handful of bites.

"Fine?" she asked, not making eye contact.

"Yes," Mark said, disconcerted. Normally there would have been some complaining, some Mabel-logic rant about how peas were weird and clearly the root of all evil in the universe, but this just- "Yes, thanks."

Mabel left the table, and Mark went back to his food. Even dinosaur chicken nuggets were utterly uninspiring right now.

They'd work it out, he reminded himself. It'd blow over, it always did.

Beside him, his wife continued eating without a pause.

\------

Later that night, Dipper floated near the ceiling of their room, waiting for Mabel to say something. She was sitting on the bed cuddling Dipper’s old lamb plushie, and seemed strangely reluctant to talk, but Dipper wasn’t going to prompt her. She could talk in her own good time.

“Mom apologized to me.” Mabel said, finally, sitting up a little and looking over at Dipper.

Dipper blinked. “She did? Seriously?”

Anna Pines was not a woman in the habit of apologizing for anything. That she would go out of her way to apologize to Mabel spoke to the seriousness of the situation. 

“Yup,” Mabel said, frowning. “I think Dad had something to do with it.” Ah, yes, that would explain it. “She said that she was just scared for me and lost her temper.”

This basically made sense.

“Do you think she meant it?” Dipper asked.

“I guess?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, but-“ Mabel continued. “She didn’t really say anything about you.”

Dipper felt something inside him clench. “Oh. Okay.”

“Is that- I mean-“

Dipper shook his head, his hair floofing out a bit under his floating top hat.“It’s fine, Mabel, it’s not like she’s gonna break her rules and summon me just so she can apologize to me, that wouldn’t make any sense at all.”

Mabel frowned. “Well maybe she should.”

Dipper made a face. “Yeah, well.” He shrugged. This wasn’t anything he knew how to deal with, weird demon powers or no. He’d rather not think about it. “So Mabel, have you heard anything from Grunkle Stan lately?”

Mabel narrowed her eyes at the subject change, but sighed, and allowed it. “Yeah,” she said, “He called this afternoon. Says that Wendy is working on some sort of ridiculous science project you’d. Apparently it involves a bunch of weird chemicals and explosions? Oh! And he said that Candy and Grenda are working on a surprise for us when we come back, but he won’t tell me what it is. I’m trying to make him tell me but I can’t figure out what sort of bribe-“

Mabel rambled on, gesturing broadly and talking about this and that, all the insignificant details of life and the people they cared about in Gravity Falls. Gradually she seemed to regain some of her endless cheer.

Dipper flipped upside down and sat on the ceiling, smiling slightly as he watched his sister ramble on.

At least some things stayed mostly the same.  

\------

Anna Pines pulled her pillow over her face, sighing loudly. Mark grimaced sympathetically.  

“Rough day?” he asked.

She sighed again, louder. “The school called about Dipper today,” she told Mark, voice only slightly muffled by the pillow.

“Oh?”

She pulled the pillow off her face and turned to face her husband. “They wanted to double check his class enrollment, see about getting him into that Honors English class. I- I told them not to bother, that he’d disappeared during the Transcendence.”

Mark frowned. This _was_ technically true, but- but Dipper was still around. He should still be learning and growing and attending school and-

“Are you sure we shouldn’t send him back to school?” Mark said. “If we set enough boundaries, then maybe-“

“Do you really want him in with all those children?”

“He’s been fine so far, Anna, he didn’t have any problems last year -“

“Last year he hadn’t been possessed by a demon!”

Mark stared at the ceiling, feeling the world rush around him. “Mabel swears he isn’t possessed, sweetie. She says that it’s just Dipper, yeah?” 

She threw her hands up. “Posessed, changed, whatever. The point is that Dipper isn’t how he used to be. He’s dangerous, and there’s no way we can justify sending him to school even if we could figure out some way to make him visible enough to attend. I don’t even want to think about what Mabel would have to- have to offer in a deal-”

Mark smiled weakly. “Maybe we could get the school board to sponsor it?  A dead rabbit a day for perfect yearlong school attendance, whaddaya think?”

Anna glared at him viciously, and Mark backpedaled immediately.

“Sorry, no, I just meant- I bet it’s not even that bad, y’know?” Mark shrugged. “He’s basically just invisible all the time. It’s not like he has, like, forbidden arcane knowledge or something. He’s not about to go start massacring cultists or eating people’s souls like those demons on the news. Heck, I bet he’s not even really making Deals right now. He- he wouldn’t start making Deals, right? Would he? Think we should make that into a rule, no Deals?”

“Mark-“

“Because I know we got Mabel to agree to that, but we never got Dipper to promise anything, and he’s just barely a teenager so who knows what would happen and maybe we should just make sure-“

Anna sighed and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “Where do you think we went wrong?” she asked.

Mark went silent, stifled the urge to put a pillow over his own face- he could suddenly see the appeal of hiding like that. “Mabel will be going back to school in a little bit,” He reminded her after a minute, “Things will calm down after that.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”

She grimaced.

“Ugh, the school also says that we have to show proof that our children been vaccinated against pixie dust. I don’t know what that is, or when we developed a vaccine against it, but-“

Mark put his arm around her. “Right, I remember hearing about that when they de-tooth-fairied the office- apparently tooth-fairies are just a subspecies of pixies. I’ll take Mabel to the doctor this week and we’ll take care of it, no worries.”

She leaned into him, glad of the comfort. “Thanks, Marker Face, glad I can count on you.”


End file.
